What is a good community manager in 2019? – Part 1/2

We often ask ourselves what a good community manager is and what qualities he should have to exercise his role effectively and fully. However, the years pass and the required skills evolve regularly according to the structures. The basics do not change but some axes differ at the dawn of 2019.

The ideal being to specialize to sell better, the community manager must still report some skills to date. We will see 16 in total, within 2 articles of which here is the first part.

Article in 2 parts

The community manager: State of play

The community manager has gone through 10 long years to become a position recognized by those who use them within their company. If it is still unknown to some structures, it is probably the result of a lack of web maturity of the company.

One of the main issues on the internet is the search for visibility, today we have to deal with an increasingly growing infoboxity on the web. It is increasingly difficult to gain this visibility, without having a team dedicated to digital among which the community manager will find its place.

4 dimensions are in my opinion essential to any structure wishing to develop on the net:

1. The SEO

2. Community management

3. Digital marketing

4. Content creation

Each domain or role has specificities specific to its universe and they complement each other. For each of its dimensions one or more people can exercise internally or externally. SEO for example is regularly subcontracted to an agency or an independent expert. As for the others it is easier to internalize them if the needs are in the long term.

For content creation one can imagine one or more people having a knowledge of SEO fundamentals. This skill makes it possible to know how to optimize the contents in order to position them on Google.

The community manager will certainly have to do day by day between the management of social networks and the animation of the communities attached to them. Finally the actions carried by a digital marketing service will bring leads to the company. This is to ensure its sustainability and bring an ROI on all of its digital actions.

16 qualities that a good community manager should have

Here are 16 qualities that will make a community manager, a good community manager in 2019. We will see the first 8 in this article and the next 8 in another article to come.

The CM can have some of these qualities but if they have them all it is then a value-added profile that should not let go!

Some of these qualities sometimes require more than knowledge, that is, to be gifted. Creativity is one of them, because not all CMs are creative because it is often a pre-disposition. Clearly it is difficult to learn to be creative if it is not in our genes. We can imitate, copy but hardly be creative by nature because it can not be learned specifically.

We could to a certain extent place the writing if it is to create content, write articles … because here too it is not necessarily given to all community managers. The community manager is not an editor by the way.

1. Be passionate and curious

The first qualities of a good community manager is to be passionate about his job because he is very time-consuming. It is not uncommon to see community managers do many hours of professional dedication, because the job does not stop at the exit of the company.

Each of the social networks in which society is present continues to live. The members interact, ask questions, comment positively and sometimes negatively. For all this the CM must remain in standby and intervene if necessary.

It is therefore essential to be passionate to practice this profession and beyond to be curious because it allows you to continue learning and better understand the mechanics of the profession year after year. Curiosity also pushes the CM to analyze, understand and also see what is done elsewhere etc …

2. Be a multi-competent community manager

We know from the beginning, the community manager is the factotum of the internet, the knife-Swiss or the handyman. It must be multi-competent to exercise effectively. The 16 qualities identified here and subsequently, partly reflect the skills to be had, to which we could add many more points.

The community manager is partly trained on several axes that will allow him to exercise through several skills. We can highlight the digital marketing and therefore the actions that are attached to it, managing a blog, mastering social networks, community animation, web writing and mastering many tools. Each universe brings together a set of skills to have.

The community manager should always be a multi-competent person

The community manager has in this case interest in having 2/3 skills as specialties to add value to his role. We will see it below, but we can emphasize, for example, the capacity to manage crises, which is a profession in itself within certain structures.

In the end the other qualities can be learned and some are more developed than others. In addition to the skills, personal and professional qualities are combined.

3. A good CM must absolutely control social networks

This is one of the fundamentals for the community manager. The first point that the CM must master perfectly are the social networks. Not all that exist but the main ones, namely:

Facebook

Instagram

Twitter

Linkedin

Youtube

Snap

Pinterest

The others will be monitored to know at least the contours. And still there are hundreds, so here too a sort is to operate among this set of networks. Social networks on the side of China are interesting to know for example.

Mastering a social network implies knowing all of its features and its language code. Among them are integrated advertising platforms that will also be known. Finally for each of them, it is good to have reference users who will be examples of the proper use of a social network.

Conversely, we can imagine what not to do through concrete examples. The net is full of pearls in community management and concrete examples of what to avoid. The community manager will have the task of mastering the main social networks and benefit from it for his company, if they are part of the digital strategy.

4. Being on standby on his sector and his discipline

Logically, a good community manager must be on standby about his sector of activity and his own role as everything evolves very quickly. He will also have an information watch to look for inspiration for his content and see the trends.

Its watch will be developed through dedicated tools like Feedly, Scoop It … in order to have a monitoring where everything is centralized. He will analyze and observe the competition, he will ensure that its brand is said on social networks and the internet in general.

The day before can extend to different things but the main thing lies in the competitive and informational.

You have to know how to bounce on the news to exploit it quickly.

5. Being a good community manager means being organized

If we are talking about more quality than competence, the organization will still help the CM become more competent if it is better organized. Difficult to be a good community manager without being a minimum organized in his work. This means planning your day so you do not waste time and scatter on parasitic tasks. The tools will play a role here, but not only.

Organization is also a nature to which rigor is attached in the work if it is well exploited. A good CM must be able to cut his day by logical task as the morning before the start for example. Thereafter the treatment of the mails and the notifications which will follow etc …

At the organizational level, we can emphasize the holding of the editorial calendar of the community manager. There are publications and important days during the year. These days allow the CM to rebound in terms of content in particular. The editorial calendar of festivals and annual events is specific to each universe. On the basis of classical holiday days and important events, it is necessary to add all that concerns its activity as possible fairs or important dates.

The organization is a quality often seen in women, so gentlemen do not get overwhelmed!

Another point observed among community managers; CMs with creativity sometimes tend not to be organized. This is a question between the dominant right brain and left brain. So a difficult point to master when it comes to nature, but there are some who are perfectly balanced about it. Warning ! This is not always a truth so to be honestly checked on a case by case basis.

6. A good CM “should” have the creativity to emerge

This is difficult to master because it is often a gift or a clear vision of the community manager. You have to have a certain balance in the choice of colors, shapes, scenarios and a set of things that tell a story. So you have to have an imaginative, inventive spirit and that is not given to everyone.

Architects and decorators have a lot to offer when it comes to transforming spaces. They sometimes have an almost instantaneous vision of how certain things should be arranged, what colors, materials and structures to adopt. It is clearly a gift coupled certainly to an apprenticeship but there are regularly predispositions at the base.

The community manager will have here as sole reference value cases to analyze and dissect to understand the mechanics and the objectives that relate to it. Then it’s him and his vision of things in addition to a graphic and editorial touch well sharpened. If creativity is not the strong point of the CM, it will be able to compensate by a more developed expertise on other points.

7. Know how to build on your community

Each community manager manages at least one community, see more according to the social networks where the company is present. If you have one or more significant communities, you can “rest” on them to generate many things:

Create surveys to decide on projects, ideas or other.

Create studies as soon as you have a representative sample.

Generate partnerships

Use expert profiles to feed content

Solicit members on internal company actions

Know how to interact on many subjects by asking for advice etc …

To know how to rely on one’s community is to make it active and not dormant. Nowadays it is very easy to move from one community to another if you do not find it interesting. We are a fan one day and we are not the next day … it is a perpetual work and every moment.

Animation is an axis, relying on its community is sometimes different.

8. Create commitment by meeting

A good community manager will not be content to stay behind a screen and a keyboard every day. He will seek to diversify, expand his skills and specialize. Among his different axes he will seek commitment in the field. Being a community manager is first and foremost going to meet his community.

Going to meet your community can be the key to successful community management
By meeting the members of his community he will be able to work on several levers:

The events

Participatory marketing

Content search

Alternating online and offline will offer a variety of missions to the community manager and allow him to earn a real commitment, where online becomes very volatile. This axis will be developed in the second part.

The meeting is particularly the point that allows to create the intra-community link, that is to say between the members of a community. If people learn to know each other outside social networks, it creates a stronger commitment and under cover of the actions deployed by the community manager for its brand.

We can see a brand like Michel and Augustin who organizes the event: “a night under the stars” where people meet, have fun and exchange during activities. When they return they have only one desire; comment on the moments spent together on the brand’s Facebook page. It creates links and strengthens the community’s commitment to the brand.